James Hetfield of Metallica Opens Up About His Anxiety Before Tours
Everyone has anxiety dreams. For some people, it can involve being naked in public or having to take a really important test. Apparently, Metallica frontman James Hetfield’s anxiety dreams involve the rest of the band slacking off while he tries to play a rubber guitar.
In a recent interview with The Metallica Report podcast, Hetfield opened up about the anxiety he struggles with going into every Metallica tour. Regarding the anxiety dreams, he said:
“So, having the nightmares about how I’m the only one who cares about what we’re doing here. ‘Where is everybody?’ I show up at the gig, everyone’s goofing off, or there’s 200 people backstage and thinking, ‘Where’s my stuff? Where’s the setlist? What songs are we doing?’ And then, typical things like the guitar neck is made of rubber, and there are only two strings on it. And, ‘Where’s my roadie?’, and the guitar cord won’t let me get to the microphone. Silly stuff like that. That has to happen, and I don’t freak out over it. All you do is you practice, and then you build that comes back pretty quickly.”
Metallica is currently on the very ambitious M72 tour which features a series of two dates in each of 22 different cities without repeating any songs between the two sets so that anyone who goes to both nights gets a fresh set of songs. Every show is in a stadium, with the band playing in the round in the middle of the field. It’s a unique concert experience, and one that gave Hetfield a bit of anxiety leading up to the tour. Later in the same interview, Hetfield talked about how he managed that anxiety by talking with his bandmates:
“The anxiety level was off the charts at the beginning of the ‘M72 Tour’. Like, how are we going to cover this stage? And, of course, my ego saying, ‘Well, the other guys don’t have to sing. They don’t have to run over there, they don’t have to do all this. Ah, no one knows the woes I have and all the worries…’”
“But as soon as I share them with the other guys, they’re like, ‘Yeah, but I got this, and I got that.’ It’s like, ‘Oh, okay. I want mine back [laughs].’ So, it’s a known. We know what we’re up against. And we know what shape we need to be in. And now, it’s just fun. We’ve broken that stage in, it’s well-trodden on, and it’s worked fantastically. And so, we just get to step back into it, and do what we do best.”
If you want to see a man heroically conquering his own anxiety, here’s the remaining dates for the M72 tour:
JUN 7 & 9, 2024 – HELSINKI, FINLAND – HELSINKI OLYMPIC STADIUM
JUN 14 & 16, 2024 – COPENHAGEN, DENMARK – PARKEN STADIUM
JUL 5 & 7, 2024 – WARSAW, POLAND – PGE NARODOWY
JUL 12 & 14, 2024 – MADRID, SPAIN – ESTADIO CÍVITAS METROPOLITANO
AUG 2 & 4, 2024 – FOXBOROUGH, MA – GILLETTE STADIUM
AUG 9 & 11, 2024 – CHICAGO, IL – SOLDIER FIELD
AUG 16 & 18, 2024 – MINNEAPOLIS, MN – U.S. BANK STADIUM
AUG 23 & 25, 2024 – EDMONTON, CANADA – COMMONWEALTH STADIUM
AUG 30 & SEP 1, 2024 – SEATTLE, WA – LUMEN FIELD
SEP 20 & 22, 2024 – MEXICO CITY, MEXICO – FORO SOL***
SEP 27 & 29, 2024 – MEXICO CITY, MEXICO – FORO SOL***
